Starwars The Old Republic MMO has introduced very very very basic & simplistic companion type system with the ability to give your 'pets' orders to craft or gather certain items. It also has a very basic affection system, with choices you make and gifts you give increasing affection and increasing crafting/gathering performance.Companion of course choose to follow you willingly. in SWTOR is not possible to 'lose' them or have them go away but I am fairly certain there may be some other games where they do (Mass effect, dragon age, baldurs gate)

What if there was no limit to the number of companions you had? If your bank roll was the determing factor of how 'powerful' you could become.Besides NPC's choosing to follow you, what if you could hire mercs like in DDO? Mercs could either be 1 shot deals or perhaps have upkeep like structures in EVE/Potbs.

I think slavery would be a very interesting dynamic in a fantasy style Realm V Realm sandbox game.

Slaves are both NPC's and 'property' at the same time.Slaves typically dont work as hard as 'freemen' or people being paid.Obviously some cultures worked slaves to death (Eypgt, Brazil,) and other countries treated them pretty well (America). You have to decide what type of setup you are going to run and what resources be dedicated to slave upkeep. You could also spend resources on luxury to increase their loyalty.Slaves have a very complex loyalty system.Governments/factions would have slavery rules/laws.

If your faction raided an enemy village and stole slaves, would you keep them for yourself? Free them and offer them jobs as mercs/employees or free them and gain 'reputation'?

I'm not easily offended myself so slavery is no big deal to me (if I was dev there would be no general chat, so less chance for stupid people to say stupid stuff)...infact I think it would be GOOD in a game. But I'm sure the mere mention of slavery in a game would cause controversy, although there is no significant objection to other 'abhorrent' human behavior in any number of other games: murder, mass murder, torture, stealing, fraud, bullying, pornography, drug use, animal & human sacrifice, necromancy, etc etc etc.

What are you thoughts on slavery in-game?

_________________Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth EA The Greed? I thought not. It’s not a story other Developers would tell you.

Drop the overcharged name by calling them "companions" or "followers" and it'll work just fine. I've long thought that NPCs should be in charge of a lot more things.

POTBS essentially has this in the form of the camps you use to make stuff. YOU aren't making oak logs. You just come around every now and then and collect what your workers have done, presumably via authentic methods of the era. I've long said that POTBS has a much better economic system than EVE, which requires you to personally go out there and sit and mine asteroids, which is the most boring fucking thing ever invented in a video game.

So yes, I think there's a great deal of room for NPC workers to take up tedious tasks while helping to maintain the immersion factor. But you're crazy to even bring up the term "slave" for them.

Just change the term to "follower" and you imply that they have free choice and your idea would be a whole lot easier to discuss.

Drop the overcharged name by calling them "companions" or "followers" and it'll work just fine. I've long thought that NPCs should be in charge of a lot more things.

POTBS essentially has this in the form of the camps you use to make stuff. YOU aren't making oak logs. You just come around every now and then and collect what your workers have done, presumably via authentic methods of the era. I've long said that POTBS has a much better economic system than EVE, which requires you to personally go out there and sit and mine asteroids, which is the most boring fucking thing ever invented in a video game.

So yes, I think there's a great deal of room for NPC workers to take up tedious tasks while helping to maintain the immersion factor. But you're crazy to even bring up the term "slave" for them.

Just change the term to "follower" and you imply that they have free choice and your idea would be a whole lot easier to discuss.

There is quite a huge difference between a worker (paid employee) and a slave though. Slaves dont earn wages, can be treated poorly/overworked, sent into dangerous conditions, etc etc etc. Slaves can be captured/freed, traded, bred, etc.

This is all referring to slaves as NPCs, not players! Thought personally I think being captured as a slave in pvp would be kinda fun.

_________________Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth EA The Greed? I thought not. It’s not a story other Developers would tell you.

I don't have a problem with it myself. I think the existence of slavery in a game world could add an interesting new dynamic between factions in how they deal with slaves or if they even allow them.

_________________Zirak / Thanoslug in lots of MMOs"Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead." -Margaret Thatcher

IMO, slave is just an RP term for vendor, pet or companion. If you go as far as making it where you can buy or force npc's to be slaves and then go as far as making it where other people can free them, then IMO you're building your game too much around slaves and I'm not sure I would be interested in a game where slaves were a considerable part of the plot or gameplay. There are many better plots for creating pvp than slave trade.

If I were designing a game and I wanted the function of slaves(ie someone to do menial task, craft, go harvest etc), I would build it as a companion(much like SWTOR) or someone you can hire or earn through leveling up or saving someone. Then I would make them NPC's in the game that can be killed(whether or not they respawn would be up for discussion) and have them physically have to go off and do the task(ie, if they were harvesting, their model would actually go to the node and beat on it, and when they were full they would have to walk(or ride a mount or use some form of in game transportation) to get the materials back to the bank. If they are killed on their travels, then the person who killed them could take their loot. I would build into this a way to protect your harvesters, be it you personally or other hired NPC's that could protect them.

not to mention that there are some people who game(albeit, probably a lesser extent) that are PC idiots that would be offended by slaves in that term even being in the game.

Fallout got away with letting you sell your wife into slavery so it isn't the first time it has been addressed in a game.

Although given the general maturity level of online gamers, in an mmo a slave mechanic would end up populating general chat with a whole new level of racist chat, not to mention how many kunta kinte spelling varients one would become acclimatized to

In a vassal system, your vassals would take care of themselves and pay you taxes which you would then give back to them for specific work you want done. e.g., you have 100 peasants, they pay you 100 gold, you pay the blacksmiths 80 gold for equipment and hire some guards for 20 gold and there you go.

Villagers can be treated pretty much like slaves but you avoid the whole PC issue.

Similarly, you could have "minions" or "followers". I don't recall the Ori from Stargate ever using the term "slave". They just had devoted followers who happily worked for them for free (because if you didn't follow them, they'd smite the hell out of you). The Goa'uld had literal slaves but half of them would have followed anyway because they thought the Goa'uld were gods.

The term slave might not be PC but you could easily call them "gladiators" or something but still have the slaving background option. I think its kindof silly because of all the stuff you mentioned. You can blowoff peoples faces but can't call them slaves.

I could see a system where you built structures like PotBS that attracted various groups of people. I'd call them all collectively followers. However, if you built something like a "fighting pit" you recieve "slaves" from you paying slavers to have them. "Apartments" could attract "citizens" who could train as soldiers. "Brothels" could bring in "mercs". Basically, you are paying for the building of the structure and upkeep to generate units. Then if you wanted, you could have a training dynamic for each type.

I think this would be interesting to have to construct a multiplayer total war style game. In PvP you go head to head... win and you get loot or lose and you have to continue to build troops. I could see RvR a possibility as well with a faction system.

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